Count Leo Tolstoy is one of the greatest novelists in history. Not everyone knows that he was also a thinker and founder of the religious and social movement - Tolstoism. However, his views turned out to be unacceptable to the Orthodox Church, so she excommunicated him. Is it deserved?
Already during the writer's lifetime, his works had a huge impact on the readers. After the publication of "Anna Karenina" (first in the years 1875–1877 the novel was published in episodes, and in 1878 it was published as a whole) husbands forbade their wives to read the book for fear that their partners would follow the example of the title character. Tolstoy was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times. In the period from 1918 to 1986, his books achieved the highest circulation in the Soviet Union - over 436 million copies.
Tolstoy with grandchildren
But behind the façade of the successful artist, there was a domestic tyrant, a man tormented by contradictory emotions, demanding of his loved ones, and at the same time ... a religious thinker.
Shaping of views
On September 23, 1862, 34-year-old Lew married 18-year-old Sofia (Sonia) Bers and moved to his ancestral estate, Jasna Polana. It was a relationship of love, but the lives of the spouses can hardly be called idyllic. The writer, although he had a progressive worldview on social issues, turned out to be a traditionalist and despot at home. In his opinion, the wife should have given up taking care of her appearance and not socializing, but devoted herself entirely to running the house, raising the children and pleasing her husband. Tolstoy's biographer Henry Troyat writes:
What attracted him about young Sonia - her cheerful disposition, straightforwardness, elegance, willingness to participate in entertainment and the desire to please men - turned out to be incompatible with the role, which she should be playing in Jasna Polana.
Tolstoy with family
When Sofia changed her hairstyle or bought a new dress, her husband accused her of being reckless. The couple literally locked themselves in the Tolstoy estate - they did not receive guests and did not visit friends. Sonia suffered a lot because of this, she missed her relatives and wrote them sad letters. The young woman was practically isolated from the world!
Meanwhile, Lew was focused on writing, the 18-year-old wife had to deal with the administration of Jasna Polana. She gave birth to 13 children (five died in infancy). The writer - a supporter of the idea of Jan Jakub Rousseau - forced his spouse to breastfeed, although it was extremely painful for her due to severe inflammation of the mammary glands. But for her husband, faithfulness to the views was more important than the happiness and peace of relatives ...
Writer? No, the philosopher
In the 1870s, Lew began to doubt the sense of his writing and life so far. In one of his later philosophical essays, he admitted that he did not understand why he was raising children and writing new novels, multiplying his fortune. This internal crisis even led him to thoughts of suicide.
Tolstoy considered that the privileges and comfort enjoyed by representatives of his social class were superfluous and even harmful. That's why he gave up many elements of his current existence:he started putting on simple clothes, working physically, becoming a vegetarian. He demanded that Sofia release the servants. Over time, he came to be called the "Earl of the Musik".
Lew wanted his wife and children to become supporters of his views, and he was angry when he was not understood by his relatives. He considered… Sofia as his greatest enemy, because - although her own husband considered having wealth a sin - she cared about the condition of her property, the cosiness of the interior and the quality of the meals served. Tolstoy's hostility towards his wife grew; it seemed that he forgot about her dedication and help (and yet, for example, she rewrote thousands of pages of his manuscripts). Disappointed, at one point he relinquished the property and handed it over to his family.
During the period of spiritual search, the writer considered his most outstanding works ("War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Sevastopol Tales") as an expression of pride and vanity. Whenever anyone started a conversation about his literary works, they got nervous and didn't pick up the topic. In 1908 he wrote in his diary:"Unfortunately, people like me for fine things, such as» Anna Karenina «."
Death at the train station
During this time, he developed his own religious and social theory, which was called "Tolstoism." It was based on two elements:"not resisting evil with violence" and leading a simple life, without luxuries. Tolstoy's religious views differed from the official doctrine of the Orthodox Church, and the main motto for the writer was:"Love your enemies."
He believed that the source of human sins was coercion resulting from the principles that guided the state. Therefore - according to him - it was necessary to liquidate the structures of the state from which the writer was separating more and more often, e.g. by refusing to participate as a witness in the trial.
Painter Ilya Repin learns about Tolstoy's death
Over time, Tolstoy began to become radicalized. He did not accept that the Church saw man as a sinful being. He did not like that it was only after death - in the Kingdom of Heaven - that people would find peace and happiness. When in 1901 he announced that the faithful did not need an intermediary in the form of the Church to talk to God, he was excommunicated.
He spent the last years of his life preaching his ideas to the circle of his students and writing more religious and philosophical works. He received many guests in Jasna Polana. But such an existence bored him - he dreamed of freedom from all conventions. Therefore, on October 28, 1910, he left the property accompanied by a personal doctor and went to the train station. He had no plan, he just started traveling from one city to another, visiting monasteries and churches at the same time.
During this trip, he caught a cold and then fell ill with pneumonia. He got off the train at the Astapowo station (now in the Lipetsk region). It was located in one of the station rooms. As many as six doctors were summoned to him, but despite their efforts, he died on November 20, 1910, at the age of 82.
Bibliography:
- Труайя А. Лев Толстой . Москва, 2007.
- Басинский П., Лев Толстой. Свободный человек . Москва, 2017.
- Клименкова М., Трагедия жены Льва Толстого. "Собеседник", May 11, 2013, (accessed November 15, 2020).